Capcom is taking the concept of official blogging seriously - hence Brian Dunn's neat multi-part interview with Lost Planet Art Director Takahiro Kawano and Director Kenji Oguro.

There's tonnes of exclusive art and insight, but Kawano's pick for favorite game art direction is interesting: "One I really admire is Square’s “Vagrant Story,” the PS1 game [as recently mentioned on GSW]. I think they focused on the visuals and the art for that game more than any other game I’ve seen. The visuals in that game are all very manga-like. The whole game looks like a series of illustrations. It’s all very consistent, with no flashy colors. Big, popular titles tend to use a lot of bright, flashy colors. But this game had a great look to it, like the art director had a vision for the game and didn’t compromise just to flash it up. It makes me a little jealous."

They also talk about using physical mecha-models to help visualize the game's mechs: "Nowadays in Hollywood it’s pretty standard practice to make a real-life model of something before turning it into CG. When you make it a real object, it’s all there in front of you. You can see it from every angle. So I wanted to do this with Lost Planet. Plus, I haven’t heard of a lot of other Japanese game companies doing it yet, either. It was about mid-way through the development cycle that the producer suggested this to me, and at the time we had already finished creating the 3D models for 3 of the Vital Suits. So we didn’t worry about those three, and only made figures out of the remaining Vital Suits. Still, the process worked very well."